o herself. Her maid stood waiting with
the jewel-case while she went to the bookstall to buy something to
read on the journey. She felt dull, almost miserable, but absolutely
determined. She knew that Caroline was right. She thought she meant to
take her advice. At any rate, she would not try to pursue the adventure
which had lured her to Paris. How she would be able to live when she
got home she did not know. But she would go home. It had been absurd,
undignified of her to come to Paris. She would try to forget all about
it.

She bought a book and some papers; then she walked to the train.

"Are you going to get in, my lady?" said the maid.

"Yes. You can put in the jewel-case."

The maid did so, and Lady Sellingworth got into the carriage and sat
next to the window on the platform side, facing the engine, with the
jewel-case beside her on the next seat. The corridor was between her
and the platform. On the right, beyond the carriage door, the line was
blocked by another train at rest in the station.

She sat still, not reading, but thinking. The maid went away to her
second-class carriage.

Lady Sellingworth continued to feel very dull. Now that she was
abandoning this adventure, or promise of adventure, she knew how much it
had meant to her. It had lifted her out of the anger and depression in
which she had been plunged by the Rupert Louth episode. It had appealed
to her wildness, had given her new hope, something to look forward
to, something that was food for her imagination. She had lived in an
imagined future that was romantic, delicious and turbulent. Now she
knew exactly how much she had counted on this visit to Paris as the door
through which she would pass into a new and extraordinary romance. She
had felt certain that something wonderful, something unconventional,
bizarre, perhaps almost maddening, was going to happen to her in Paris.

And now--At this moment she became aware of some influence which drew
her attention to the platform on her left. She had not seen anyone;
she had simply felt someone. She turned her head and looked through the
window of the corridor.

The brown man was on the platform alone, standing still and looking
intently towards her carriage. Two or three people passed him. He did
not move. She felt sure that he was waiting for her to get out, that
this time he meant to speak to her.

In a moment all her good resolutions, all the worldly wise advice of
Miss Briggs, all her dul